Meg: Hell's Aquarium (46 page)

Standing in the bridge, facing the stern, Mac aims his binoculars at the lagoon—

—catching site of the white blur moving beneath the azure water. “Looks like she’s staying deep, circling.” He turns to Brent Nichols. The biologist is seated at a work station with his laptop. “Hey, Doc, you think the
McFarland’s
size and proximity to her lair is intimidating our fish?”

“Could be.” Dr. Nichols scans his monitor, the computer program linked to Angel’s nervous system. “Her pulse rate is a bit higher, respiration rate’s climbing, too. I suppose she could perceive the ship to be a larger challenger.”

“Some money shot.” Erik swims over to Jonas, his fear replaced by anger. “What am I supposed to do now? Rename the documentary
Chicken of the Sea?
”

Erik aims his camera down the throat of one of the canal door pores, filming the blue-green void. “Nothing but B-roll. What a waste of time.”

Jonas scans the outer door, his mind slipping back to a bad memory—the first time he had ever observed Angel underwater from the canal doors. He was a different person back then, forty-one and just married, weighed down by the death of his stillborn child and the financial burden of the Institute. He had set out that day to inspect the canal door hinges and had nearly died in this very spot.

Where had the years gone? What would he change if he could go back?

God saved you that day, gave you a second chance . . . and here you are, back in the same place more than twenty years later. Did I earn that second chance . . . or have I wasted it?

The urgency in Dr. Nichol’s voice snaps him from his thoughts. “Angel’s pulse rate is soaring. I don’t think she’s intimidated by the
McFarland
. I think she’s enraged by its presence.”

“Jonas, it’s Mac. She’s leaving the lagoon. Can you see her?”

He moves to another pore, staring into the aqua-blue waters, waiting . . . waiting—

—and then he sees his fish.

Jonas’s heart skips a beat. Déjà vu hits him as he registers Angel’s speed, body position, and demeanor in one life-and-death split second.

His first instinct is to swim away. Instead, he lunges for Erik Hollander, grabbing him by his elbow.

The young director twists his arm free. “Are you crazy? You’re ruining my shot.”

“She’s charging the door! Move!” Jonas attempts to drag him away, gives up, then swims past the steel barricade, seeking cover behind the canal’s southern concrete wall.

The director turns back to the pore—

—his mind reassuring him that the thick steel King Kong-size doors will remain sealed against the albino creation now filling his vision—

BAMMM !

The deafening roar of rolling thunder assaults his eardrums, blotting out all sound as force-equals-mass-times-weight, releasing an explosion of energy which propels him through the water faster than a human can swim. The sea floor soars by, filling his vision as the concussion wave pile-drives him face-first into the sand, his ragged body flipping end over end, the ringing sensation in his skull unresponsive to the long, shearing scream of weathered steel as the canal doors’ hinges are forcibly wrenched from their rusted frame—the brain-piercing sound the last sensation Erik Hollander experiences before his mind says
enough
and shuts everything down.

Angel wiggles her way past the two unhinged barriers, shaking her head like a mad bull. Her proximity to the larger challenger in open water causes primordial defensive mechanisms to take control, her back arching in spasms, her pectoral fins pointing down, her caudal fin stiffening as it beats the sea and she attacks. She gnaws at the starboard rudder, then propels herself along the bottom, homing in on the blood seeping out from her challenger’s open belly.

Deck Officer Christopher Shane Long had been assisting a deck hand with lowering a chum bucket into the hopper when his bones had registered the massive underwater impact. The Tennessee native leans out over the starboard gangway’s rail, glancing back at the canal.

“Oh, hell.
. . .
”

Barbed wire and buoys, marking the canal entrance only seconds ago, are now floating away like tiny islands.

Long turns back to the hopper, his shouts of warning obliterated—

—as the hold erupts in an upheaval of white water and an ivory-white triangular head that is longer and wider than his brother-in-law’s cement mixer!

Christopher grips the rail and hangs on as the monster bashes its skull against the steel contours of the hopper, each wallop shaking the ship and sending small tidal waves from the flooded hold across the open deck.

Mac crosses the bridge to the forward-facing bay windows. “She’s in! Captain, seal the hopper! Doc, put her to sleep!”

“I can’t!” Dr. Nichols is working furiously at his computer. “Her testosterone levels are overwhelming her sensory array. She’s too riled up!”

Robert Nealis joins Mac by the window. The
McFarland
captain stares at the chaos below, the creature’s mouth gnashing on pipes, its tail whipping the hopper into a white-water frenzy. “Good God, Mackreides, do something before that monster sinks us!”

Mac exits the bridge and bounds down the catwalk’s exterior stairwell to the main deck—

—barely hanging on to the rail as the ship rolls beneath him. Fumbling for his radio, he yells into the receiver, “Rosenfeld, retract the hose and prepare to pump!”

Deck Officer Robin Rosenfeld and her three-man detail are stationed on the stern deck, manning three hundred feet of rubber hose harnessed to a winch. The free end of the hose feeds into a hydraulic pump and whirlpool-size slurry bucket filled with a milky-white mixture of tricaine methanesulfonate and seawater.

James Gelet is filming with his steady-cam, dodging splashes and stepping over hoses as he attempts to stay out of the fiery fifty-four-year-old redhead’s way.

“Gelet, get that damn camera off me!” She is about to shove the producer aside when she spots Mac hurrying toward them. “Mackreides, we’re retracting the hose. What the hell’s happening?”

“Angel’s in the hopper! Give me enough line to reach her. On my signal, start pumping the anesthetic.”

“You got it.”

“Hold it,” Gelet stops filming. “The Meg’s on board? Where’s Erik and Taylor?”

“Still below. Look for them to surface.”

The nozzle end of the hose dances up the side of the ship and across the main deck. Rosenfeld slams the winch into neutral, then reverse, feeding out slack to Mac, who grabs the end of the hose and drags the wet length of flexible tubing past a labyrinth of thirty-six-inch pipes and onto the main deck’s gangway.

Gelet looks over the stern rail and sees only empty sea.
Erik’s fine, go after the money shot!
Heading forward, he chases after Mac.

A dozen crewmen are caught on the hopper’s starboard and port-side gangways, holding on as the twisting, flailing white leviathan batters the inside of the hold just below their perch, the enraged Meg sending six-foot swells rolling across the main deck.

Mac drags the hose across the starboard gangway. Grabbing the slack, the crewmen help him re-position the feed-line, allowing him a clear shot into the hopper. James Gelet crosses the starboard gangway. Anchoring his legs around a rail post, he begins filming—

—as Mac yells over the radio, “Now, Rosenfeld, now!”

Angel lunges for him and misses. Her head surfaces ten feet below, her teeth gnaw at the steel plates as Mac aims the milky-white jet stream down her throat.

The Meg slides back inside the pool of water then rises again to spy-hop—

—Mac nailing her again, spraying the elixir into her open mouth.

Angel’s gills process the powerful anesthetic into her nervous system. She flails her head in protest, her movements gradually slowing as the drugs gain a foothold. After another minute, her monstrous head slips beneath the water and she levels out, attempting to swim in order to breathe.

Mac yells over his radio, “Captain, start the dredgers!”

The two massive suction pipes trailing along either side of the ship jump to life, pumping a river of water into the front of the hopper, providing a steady current for the Meg to swim against.

With Angel’s nervous system finally calming, Brent Nichols is able to alter the Megalodon’s brain wave pattern, moving her to “sleep,” a shutdown mode that permits the shark to rest while the organ that controls her swim muscles, located in the spinal cord, takes over, perpetually propelling her forward to breathe.

James Gelet continues to film. Only the tip of Angel’s caudal fin is visible above the hopper’s water level. The tail flicks back and forth in slow, deliberate strokes, the Meg matching the pace of the dredger pumps’ current.

Mac and Gelet turn to see Jonas bounding across the starboard gangway, still in his wetsuit. “She’s in the hopper? Thank God.”

Gelet smiles. “Looks like you guys missed all the action. No worries—” the producer pats his camera “—I managed to get it all on film. Guess Erik will have to renegotiate his split on the DVD. Where is he?”

“He’s in sickbay with a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and three broken ribs.” Jonas shoves Hollander’s HD video camera into Gelet’s chest. “You may want to check out his footage before you decide to renege on your deal.”

28.

Panthalassa Sea

The timeless, primordial cold envelopes the wounded animal, seeping into its wings, shrinking its appendages at the molecular level, causing its dense skin to crack. Aided by the ocean’s ungodly weight, it presses its advantage, dousing the dying creature’s warmth within.

David Taylor opens his eyes. Death has taken his vessel, stealing its life-giving heat, rendering it dark and powerless. The Manta Ray’s acrylic shell creaks and crackles, the ocean laying claim to its remains—the submersible buried nose-first at a thirty-degree angle. All but the back of the cockpit and tail section covered in silt.

Hypothermia has taken David’s body, dropping his internal thermostat two degrees, setting his limbs to shake, his teeth to chatter. He can see his breath in the dim olive hue coming from above and behind his head, the night glass revealing a final sliver of ocean, the sandy sea floor gradually snuffing out the last of his light.